August 24, 1953: Oh Come ON Charlie Brown

This is at least the second strip with this theme. Currently, Schulz's emphasis is on showing that Charlie Brown's neuroses are paranoid, and even a bit egotistical. That goes away after a while.

Sunday, August 23, 1953: Be specific with Snoopy

There's something of Calvin reacting to his dad in Snoopy's responses to Charlie Brown here. There's a later strip, involving a camera, that's makes this even more noticeable.

In the next-to-last strip, Snoopy's snout is thicker than usual, moving him closer to his modern appearance. But he's still got a long way to go there.

August 22, 1953: Snoopy vs. the Yard: The Ball

Another chapter in the tale of a poor young dog's persecution by lawn equipment.

August 21, 1953: 6,000 games now

6,000 games now.

If we accept that Lucy is by now maybe five years old, and assume that she was somehow playing from birth, that makes for 100 games a day month. Somehow I think they might have counted wrong.

August 19 is a duplicate. Anyone with access to the Fantagraphics collections able to fill us in on it?

EDIT: Joshua Probert mentions in the comments that "day" is way off. He's correct, it's more like per month. Still, considering the ostensible amount of time these kinds have been alive (which already looks silly compared to the time the strip's been running), 6,000 games is still fairly ludicrous, you must admit.

August 17, 1953: Potato chips, oh boy!

Walking over the potato chips that she's dumped onto the floor is a nice touch.

August 15, 1953: Snoopy punches the clock

This one's linked mostly for the perfect view of Snoopy from a three-quarter perspective. We don't see him in the hand puppet pose anymore, but still this is an unusual depiction of the dog if you look closely. Snoopy's face appears to be narrower when viewed from the side than from an angle. Notice, you only rarely see a character's face straight-on; they're almost always at least a little angle in there. In most of the kids' cases this is probably so their nose doesn't look funny since that C-shape best reads as a nose in profile. Although Snoopy doesn't have the nose problem, his snout is even harder to read straight on. It's like how Mickey Mouse, in cartoons, his ears are always shown in profile, and sometimes artists depicting the mouse have to be clever so they read correctly.

Sunday, August 16, 1953: Full Frontal Snoopy

More three-quarters' drawings of ol' Snoops. We also get more of his thoughts, again delivered as speech balloons. Here it is obvious that none of the kids can hear his thoughts. I think we're approaching the point soon where Schulz abandons the speech balloons for the dog's thoughts and switches over fully to thought bubbles.

August 14, 1953: Speech Balloon Typography

I think the real purpose of this strip was just to let Charles Schulz play around with drawing type. This had to have been easier to render than the gothic text he drew for Schroeder's German.

August 13, 1953: Real peppermint

It's surprising how much of the kids' (and Snoopy's) lives revolve around candy. Although we have more of it now, I think, kids today don't seem to fixate on it like the kids in the comic. And later on the kids mention it far less.

To again treat a Peanuts strip as if it is something that could happen in life, I would not think dogs would be fans of hard candy at all, let alone peppermint.

August 11, 1953: Schroeder and Snoopy

I'm at one of those points again where I feel like I need to link every strip. It's because this is such a formative period in Peanuts history. Many of the things we've seen frequently in later strips and compilations got their start in this period.

Here, it's the team of Schroeder and Snoopy. Snoopy works well with many characters, but Schroeder most teams only with him or Lucy. Up to this point we've also seen him and Charlie Brown in the strips where Charlie Brown draws a cartoon, and the two sometimes meet on the pitchers' mound.

It might be interesting to do a statistical analysis of which characters appear with which other ones, in what frequency. I'm not gonna do it, though.

I'm not sure, but this might be the first time we've seen a single 'Z' in a word balloon used to signify sleep. Later on Schulz has some fun with this convention, especially with giant, serif'd Zs.